ALBERT

Description: This viewgraph presentation gives a general overview of the X-43A program. The contents include: 1) X-43A Program Overview; 2) Vehicle Description; 3) Flight 1, MIB & Return to Flight; 4) Flight 2 and Results; and 5) Flight 3 and Results.

Description: A viewgraph presentation describing the hypersonics program at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center is shown. The topics include: 1) X-43A Program Overview; 2) Vehicle Description; 3) Flight 1, MIB & Return to Flight; 4) Flight 2 and Results; 5) Flight 3 and Results; and 6) Concluding Remarks

Description: In less than two years, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will launch the Ares I-X mission. This will be the first flight of the Ares I crew launch vehicle, which, together with the Ares V cargo launch vehicle, will send humans to the Moon and beyond. Personnel from the Ares I-X Mission Management Office (MMO) are finalizing designs and fabricating vehicle hardware for an April 2009 launch. Ares I-X will be a suborbital development flight test that will gather critical data about the flight dynamics of the integrated launch vehicle stack; understand how to control its roll during flight; better characterize the severe stage separation environments that the upper stage engine will experience during future flights; and demonstrate the first stage recovery system. NASA also will modify the launch infrastructure and ground and mission operations. The Ares I-X Flight Test Vehicle (FTV) will incorporate flight and mockup hardware similar in mass and weight to the operational vehicle. It will be powered by a four-segment Solid Rocket Booster (SRB), which is currently in Shuttle inventory, and will include a fifth spacer segment and new forward structures to make the booster approximately the same size and weight as the five-segment SRB. The Ares I-X flight profile will closely approximate the flight conditions that the Ares I will experience through Mach 4.5, up to approximately130,OOO feet and through maximum dynamic pressure ("Max Q") of approximately 800 pounds per square foot. Data from the Ares I-X flight will support the Ares I Critical Design Review (CDR), scheduled for 2010. Work continues on Ares I-X design and hardware fabrication. All of the individual elements are undergoing CDRs, followed by an integrated vehicle CDR in March 2008. The various hardware elements are on schedule to begin deliveries to Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in early September 2008.

Description: No abstract available

Description: Charging System Analyzer Program (Nascap-2K) is a comprehensive update, revision, and extension of several NASA and Air Force codes for predicting electrical charging of spacecraft. Nascap-2K integrates the capabilities and models included in four independent programs: NASCAP/LEO for low-Earth orbits, NASCAP/GEO for geosynchronous orbits, POLAR for auroral charging in polar orbits, and DynaPAC (Dynamic Plasma Analysis Code) for time-dependent plasma interactions. While each of the earlier codes works well for the range of problems for which it was designed, by today s standards these codes are difficult to learn, cumbersome to use, and overly restrictive in their geometric modeling capabilities. Nascap-2K incorporates these models into a single software package that includes spacecraft surface modeling, spatial gridding, environmental specifications, calculating scripting, and post-processing analysis and visualization. The provided material properties database includes values from earlier programs as well as values from recent measurements. Development of Nascap-2K continues with future capabilities to include interactions with dense plasma such as those produced by electric propulsion.

Description: During post-flight processing of STS-116, damage to crewmember Robert Curbeam's Phase VI Glove Thermal Micrometeoroid Garment was discovered. This damage consisted of: loss of RTV-157 palm pads on the thumb area on the right glove, a 0.75 inch cut in the Vectran adjacent to the seam and thumb pad (single event cut), constituting the worst glove damage ever recorded for the U.S. space program. The underlying bladder and restraint were found not be damaged by this event. Evaluation of glove damage found that the outer Vectran fibers were sliced as a result of contact with a sharp edge or pinch point rather than general wear or abrasion (commonly observed on the RTV pads). Damage to gloves was also noted on STS-118 and STS-120. One potential source of EMU glove damages are sharp crater lips on external handrails, generated by micrometeoroid and orbital debris (MMOD) impacts. In this paper, the results of a hypervelocity impact (HVI) test program on representative and actual ISS handrails are presented. These tests were performed in order to characterize impact damage profiles on ISS handrails and evaluate alternatives for limiting risk to future missions. It was determined that both penetrating and non-penetrating MMOD impacts on aluminum and steel ISS handrails are capable of generating protruding crater profiles which exceed the heights required for EMU glove abrasion risk by an order of magnitude. Testing demonstrated that flexible overwraps attached to the outside of existing handrails are capable of limiting contact between hazardous crater formations and crewmember gloves during extravehicular activity (EVA). Additionally, replacing metallic handrails with high strength, low ductility, fiber reinforced composite materials would limit the formation of protruding crater lips on new ISS modules.

Description: The presentations will be given during the X-Prize symposium, exploring the multi-faceted dimensions of spaceflight ranging from the technical developments necessary to achieve safe routine flight to and from and through space to the new personal business opportunities and economic benefits that will open in space and here on Earth. The symposium will delve into the technical, regulatory, market and financial needs and challenges that must be met in charting and executing the incremental developments leading to Personal Spaceflight and the opening of a Place Called Space. The presentation covers facets of human space flight including descriptions of life in space, the challenges of delivering medical care in space, and the preparations needed for safe and productive human travel to the moon and Mars.

Description: The Solar-B mission is a collaboration between the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) of the United Kingdom and the European Space Agency. The principal scientific goals of the mission are to understand the processes of magnetic field generation, transport and ultimate dissipation of solar magnetic fields and how the release of magnetic energy is responsible for the heating and structuring of the chromosphere and corona. The scientific payload consists of three instruments: the Solar Optical Telescope that consists of the Optical Telescope Assembly and the Focal Plane Package (FPP), the X-ray Telescope and the EUV Imaging Spectrometer Each instrument is a result of the combined talents of all the members of the international team and their design and performance is described in separate papers in this session. The instruments are designed to work together as an 'observatory' simultaneously studying the target, at which the spacecraft is pointed, at different levels in the atmosphere. The spacecraft is scheduled for launch in September 2006 from the Uchinoura Space Center into a 600 km circular, sun-synchronous, polar orbit with a nominal elevation of 97.9 degrees. The orbit provides at least two morning and two evening contacts in Japan. Morning contacts are used for recovering quick look science data and the evening contacts for uploading commands. In addition ESA will provide 15 contacts per day from the Norwegian high latitude (78deg 14' N) ground station at Svalbard. The data downloads are transmitted to the ISAS Sirius database. They will be reformatted into FITS files and archived as Level 0 data on the ISAS DARTS system and made available to the scientific community. Scientific operations will be conducted from the IS AS facility located in Sagamihara, Japan. They are separated into planning, implementation and archiving. The planning process involves monthly, weekly and daily planning meetings. All scientific data will be made available after the first six month approximately one week after its collection.

Description: Auto-Generated Semantic Processing (AGSP) Services is a suite of software tools for automated generation of other computer programs, denoted cross-platform semantic adapters, that support interoperability of computer-based communication systems that utilize a variety of both new and legacy communication software running in a variety of operating- system/computer-hardware combinations. AGSP has numerous potential uses in military, space-exploration, and other government applications as well as in commercial telecommunications. The cross-platform semantic adapters take advantage of common features of computer- based communication systems to enforce semantics, messaging protocols, and standards of processing of streams of binary data to ensure integrity of data and consistency of meaning among interoperating systems. The auto-generation aspect of AGSP Services reduces development time and effort by emphasizing specification and minimizing implementation: In effect, the design, building, and debugging of software for effecting conversions among complex communication protocols, custom device mappings, and unique data-manipulation algorithms is replaced with metadata specifications that map to an abstract platform-independent communications model. AGSP Services is modular and has been shown to be easily integrable into new and legacy NASA flight and ground communication systems.

Description: This viewgraph presentation reviews the standards for space flight hardware based on human capabilities and limitations. The contents include: 1) Scope; 2) Applicable documents; 3) General; 4) Human Physical Characteristics and Capabilities; 5) Human Performance and Cognition; 6) Natural and Induced Environments; 7) Habitability Functions; 8) Architecture; 9) Hardware and Equipment; 10) Crew Interfaces; 11) Spacesuits; 12) Operatons: Reserved; 13) Ground Maintenance and Assembly: Reserved; 14) Appendix A-Reference Documents; 15) Appendix N-Acronyms and 16) Appendix C-Definition. Volume 2 is supported by the Human Integration Design Handbook (HIDH)s.